General

I've seen religion destroy many families and relationships. It's quite sad.

It is a sad thing, especially since religion should be about unifying...

Exactly, I'm of the position of "We can all coexist". And it especially surprises me when some Atheists are offended by Christians and other religious groups having a backlash at them when the Atheists were overly critical in the first place.



Now that sounds good on paper but here's the thing. Witnessing is a tenet of Christianity. One of the most quoted Bible verses is "Faith without works is dead", and this basically means that your faith is worth nothing unless you share it with others. Now I do think there's a right and a wrong way to go about it. For instance going up to someone and harping at them about how immoral they are and how they're going to hell is the wrong way. The right way isn't even sitting down and telling the other person "You should convert" it's just letting the other person know that you are a Christian and then witnessing through your actions.

The "Us vs Them" mentality needs to be thrown out. At the core of all modern religion is unity, and in my opinion that alone makes any "religious" person who uses religion to engender divisiveness a false-believer.

I must agree. In the US the constitution states a separation of Church and State, but that's just a farce.

I think that politics should keep out of religion and vice versa. Belief should have no bearing on a mans ability to run a country.

I'm going to make my way down the pager and respond as is felt needed.
Sweet sauce: you have my condolances on zealousy lynching another what sounded like perfectly functional relationship. I haven't ever had the issue, but having taken similar flack I sympathize with your position.
Fatology: how can there be a fair discussion when we live under a system of goverment that as a matter of ideological disposition discriminates against the faith upon which this country's laurels and moral basis were founded? Yes, all religions have a similar code of ethics with varience as to the mythos and reasons behind them, but without a basic equality of faiths before the eyes of "secular" authorities no discussion can be fairly moderated in the first place.
Choco029: a) you're end point was interesting as a show case of personal belief, I'm AGNOSTIC, and my reason is thus; having been raised with the general understanding of Judeo-christian culture and ethics as a backdrop but the freedom mentally to explore other religions, I've decided like all other important things time and due diligence should be applied to such an important decision as where, whom, and how I choose to worship. I'm doing my research before that.
JimmyB: you realize that Atheism more or less constitutes a non-religious/ anti-religious religion due to how it's grown into a fairly ideological bit on its own?
Slug: A)evolution only works as a socio-mechanical and microdevelopmental concept; when applied to the actual developmental history of the earth-with timing of major species adaptations, events that shifted power from or lead to the survival of others, inteligent design has a pretty solid backing. Religion and it's influences are interwoven into the fabric of our nation and the sterilization of it-not things like fear of god as much as the motivation behind moral behavior beyond "because" arguments, has only lead to a furthering societies greater delemas.
OniGumo: you're like the frickin' Guru of this so I'm only gonna correct you on one thing-which you may or may not be aware of already. The Seperation of Church and State was from a letter of the second president of the nation-Jefferson as I recall, assuring a local church that growing federal power wouldn't ballon into the english, state-run-religion, monopoly that they'd just fought off. It was meant to protect faith FROM the state, not enable the state to bash, beat, and bludgeon religion into any shape or form it saw fit by means of regulations and determinations of rights only the sacred governing bodies of the church itself has the right to weigh in on.

I don't mind religion until the point where they start substituting 'logic' with 'faith'. I also think that a union between two people of different ideas is not impossible just as long as both people see the differences as reconcilable.

By reacting like this you discredit your own argument. I'm a biology major and nearing the end of my Bachelor level studies, and so I've taken an entire course dedicated to the study of evolution as an explanation for bio-diversity. I also happen to be Christian, I won't say I'm devout because that's not exactly true but I am a firm believer. But that doesn't mean I don't believe in evolution, in fact I think that evolution and Intelligent Design go hand in hand quite well. If you don't believe me then read the first chapter of Genesis and then compare it to the Theory of Evolution.

Also, as a non-denominational christian I tend to have a poor view on organized religion based on its history. Just a side bar.

Back to the original topic:

I don't think religion matters much if it's a casual relationship. But if you're talking marriage/having kids, OF COURSE you want to marry someone with the same religion, especially if you have one of those "everybody-besides-us-is-going-to-hell" religions. You want to raise your kids thinking that there is no other choice. If the parents have different religions, they'll think, at best, that choice of religion is arbitrary and at worst " Daddy is going to hell and we're all going to heaven." Which is a pretty awful thing to tell your children, in my book.

So I don't blame people for breaking up over this.


NOTE: Personally I'm an atheist or agnostic, depending on how you define the terms.

Just to clarify myself, I am not a Young Earth Creationist, I believe the earth is around 4.6 billion years old. So that also means I don't believe that everything was created in 6 days, at least not as humans perceive days. There are multiple passages in the bible that suggest time is completely irrelevant to the divine.

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